Within Alma, the purchase request function does a matching process with local record using the ISBN field (MARC 020 $$a). Unfortunately, whether it is set up using fuzzy or exact, any 020 $$a with a-z text in the field causes an error and prevents the purchase request from being created. This occurs often with older or imported records, where the additional information has not been added to the $$q. The workaround from Ex Libris is to link the bib and then unlink to edit the bib information, removing the non-ISBN information before saving. However, this would mean that the purchase request is not attached to the local record. We queried with Ex Libris (case number 07042507) regarding the setup of the purchase request form within Alma to provide a work around for the fact that any local record with a-z in the field results in an error, even with fuzzy matching, and were told to add an enhancement request.

We cannot use this feature in Alma currently due to the mis-matching causing additional work for our Acquisitions staff to re-link, our Metadata Team having to clean up the record before the order being placed, or us spending a lot of time and effort in trying to create a normalization rule that could clean up the records in bulk and continuously. We would like the form to call only on the element that is the ISBN, e.g by using reg ex to only bring in the ISBN element even when the $$a has non ISBN elements within it.